Travel Spotlight: Imnaha Store and Tavern

Travel Spotlight

Imnaha Store and Tavern

This is a little tavern in a little town with a big menu and big opinions. Frog legs leap off the menu selections, for example. Signs are posted around at least four varieties of taxidermied local wildlife. The décor is a sounding board for owners Dave and Sallie Tanzey’s opinions on various matters—from wolves (kill) to rattlesnakes (kill many). Opened in 1902, the tavern is also Imnaha’s only grocery stop for the community’s 200-or-so residents, visiting hunters or anglers. Imnaha is thirty miles from the nearest Eastern Oregon town of Joseph. The tavern is a good stopping point for sightseers heading up the dirt road to Hat Point, a Snake River overlook with Hells Canyon below.